but when she’d left the hospital she had been in no mood to think of such practicalities. All she had been able to concentrate on was her mother, and fulfilling her promise to her. Her mother had always said she was too impulsive and that she never stopped to think before acting.
After Jenny had gone, she drank her tea impatiently, ignoring the small delicacies Jenny had provided. She admitted absently that she probably ought to eat something, but the thought of food nauseated her. It struck her that she was probably suffering from shock, but she was so used to the robustness of her physical health that she barely gave the idea more than a passing acknowledgement.
Seeing her restlessness, Faye put down her teacup as well. ‘The diaries,’ she questioned uneasily. ‘Did Liz really mean all of us to read them?’
‘Yes. I’m afraid so. I’m as reluctant to open them as you are, Faye. Knowing Mother and how meticulous she is about everything, I’m sure they contain nothing more than detailed records of her work on the house, the estate and the mill. But I suspect the human race falls into two distinct groups: those people like you and me who feel revulsion at the thought of prying into something as intimate as a diary, and those who are our opposites, who relish the thought of doing so. I have no idea why Mother wants us to read the things… I don’t want to do it any more than you do, but I gave my promise.’ She paused, hesitating about confiding to Faye her ridiculous feeling that if she didn’t, if she broke her promise, she would somehow be shortening the odds on her mother’s survival and then decided against it, feeling that to do so would be to somehow or other attempt to escape from the burden of that responsibility by putting it on to Faye’s so much more fragile shoulders.
‘I suppose I might as well make a start. We may as well get it over with as quickly as possible. We can ring the hospital again at eight tonight, and hope that all of us will be able to visit tomorrow… I thought that as I read each diary I could pass them on to you, and then you could pass them on to Camilla, once you’ve read them.’
‘Where will you do it?’ Faye asked her nervously. ‘In here, or…?’
‘I might as well use the library,’ Sage told her. ‘I’ll get Charles to light the fire in there.’
Even now, knowing there was no point in delaying, she was deliberately trying to find reasons to put off what she had to do. Did she really need a fire in the library? The central heating was on. It startled her, this insight into her own psyche… What was she afraid of? Confirmation that her mother didn’t love her? Hadn’t she accepted that lack of love years ago…? Or was it the reopening of that other, deeper, still painful wound that she dreaded so much? Was it the thought of reading about that time so intensely painful to her that she had virtually managed to wipe her memory clear of it altogether?
What was she so afraid of…?
Nothing, she told herself firmly. Why should she be…? She had nothing to fear…nothing at all. She picked up the coffee-coloured linen jacket she had been wearing and felt in the pocket for her mother’s keys.
It was easy to spot the ones belonging to the old-fashioned partners’ desk in the library, even if she hadn’t immediately recognised them.
‘The diaries are in the drawers on the left side of the desk,’ Camilla told her quietly, and then, as though sensing what Sage thought she had successfully hidden, she asked uncertainly, ‘Do you…would you like us to come with you?’
For a moment Sage’s face softened and then she said derisively, ‘It’s a set of diaries I’m going to read, Camilla, not a medieval text on witchcraft… I doubt that they’ll contain anything more dangerous or illuminating than Mother’s original plans for the garden and a list of sheep-breeding records.’
She stood up swiftly, and walked over to the door, pausing there to ask, ‘Do you still have dinner at eight-thirty?’
‘Yes, but we could change that if you wish,’ Faye told her.
Sage shook her head. ‘No…I’ll read them until eight and then we can ring the hospital.’
As she closed the door behind her, she stood in the hall for a few minutes. The spring sunshine turned the panelling the colour of dark honey, illuminating the huge pewter jugs of flowers and the enormous stone cavern of the original fireplace.
The parquet floor was old and uneven, the rugs lying on it rich pools of colour. The library lay across the hall from the sitting-room, behind the large drawing-room. She stared at the door, and turned swiftly away from it, towards the kitchen, to find Charles and ask him to make up the fire.
While he was doing so she went upstairs. Her bedroom had been redecorated when she was eighteen. Her mother had chosen the furnishings and the colours as a surprise, and she had, Sage admitted, chosen them well.
The room was free of soft pretty pastels, which would have been far too insipid for her, and instead was decorated in the colours she loved so much: blues, reds, greens; colours that drew out the beauty of the room’s panelled walls.
The huge four-poster bed had been made on the estate from their own wood; her name and date of birth were carved on it, and the frieze decorating it had carved in the wood the faces of her childhood pets. A lot of care had gone into its design and execution; to anyone else the bed would have been a gift of great love, but she had seen it merely as the execution of what her mother conceived to be her duty. Her daughter was eighteen and of age, and therefore she must have a gift commensurate with such an occasion.
In the adjoining bathroom, with its plain white suite and dignified Edwardian appearance, Sage washed her hands and checked her make-up. Her lipstick needed renewing, and her hair brushing.
She smiled mirthlessly at herself as she did so… Still putting off the evil hour…why? What was there after all to fear… to reveal… ? She already knew the story of her mother’s life as everyone locally knew it. It was as blameless and praiseworthy as that of any saint.
Her mother had come to this house as a young bride, with a husband already seriously ill, his health destroyed by the war. They had met when her mother worked as a nursing aide, fallen in love and married and come to live here at Cottingdean, the estate her father had inherited from a cousin.
Everyone knew her mother had arrived here when she was eighteen to discover that the estate her husband had drawn for her in such glowing colours—the colours of his own childhood—had become a derelict eyesore.
Everyone knew how her mother had worked to restore it to what it had once been. How she had had the foresight and the drive to start the selective breeding programme with the estate’s small flock of sheep that was to produce the very special fleece of high-quality wool.
But how her mother had had the vision to know that there would come a time when such wool was in high demand, how she had had the vision to persuade her husband to allow her to experiment with the production of that wool, let alone the run-down mill, Sage realised she had no idea, and with that knowledge came the first stirrings of curiosity.
Everyone knew of the prosperity her mother had brought to the village, of the new life she had breathed into Cottingdean. Everyone knew of the joys and sorrows of her life; of the way she had fought to keep her husband alive, of the cherished son she had borne and lost, of the recalcitrant and troublesome daughter she was herself…
No, there were no real secrets in her mother’s life. No reason why she herself should experience this tension…this dread…this fear almost that made her so reluctant to walk into
